“We think by feeling. What is there to know?”
Source: On Poetry and Craft: Selected Prose
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Famous Theodore Roethke Quotes
“The body and the soul know how to play In that dark world where gods have lost their way.”
Source: The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke
“Who rise from flesh to spirit know the fall: The word outleaps the world, and light is all.”
Source: The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke
“The living all assemble! What's the cue?-- Do what the clumsy partner wants to do!”
Source: The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke
Source: The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke
“Be sure that whatever you are is you.”
Source: The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke
“I wish I could find an event that meant as much as simple seeing.”
Source: Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke, 1943-63
“What we need is more people who specialize in the impossible.”
Source: On Poetry and Craft: Selected Prose
“Over every mountain there is a path, although it may not be seen from the valley.”
“A lively understandable spirit Once entertained you. It will come again. Be still. Wait.”
Source: On Poetry and Craft: Selected Prose
“Deep in their roots, all flowers keep the light.”
Source: Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke, 1943-63
“A mind too active is no mind at all.”
Source: The achievement of Theodore Roethke: a comprehensive selection of his poems
“I lose and find myself in the long water. I am gathered together once more.”
Source: The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke
“Those who are willing to be vulnerable move among mysteries.”
Source: Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke, 1943-63
“What falls away is always. And is near.”
Source: The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke
Source: The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke
“How body from spirit slowly does unwind, until we are pure spirit at the end.”
Source: The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke
“Art is the means we have of undoing the damage of haste. It's what everything else isn't.”
Source: On Poetry and Craft: Selected Prose
“I long for the imperishable quiet at the heart of form.”
Source: The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke
Source: The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke
“The stones were sharp, The wind came at my back; Walking along the highway, Mincing like a cat.”
Source: Selected poems
Source: The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke
“(I measure time by how a body sways.)”
Source: The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke
“I have gone into the waste lonely places”
Source: The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke
Source: The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke
“Nothing would give up life: Even the dirt keeps breathing a small breath.”
Source: The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke
“All lovers live by longing, and endure: Summon a vision and declare it pure.”
Source: The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke
“Pain wanders through my bones like a lost fire”
Source: The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke
“May my silences become more accurate.”
Source: On Poetry and Craft: Selected Prose
“The visible exhausts me. I am dissolved in shadow.”
Source: Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke, 1943-63
“Should we say the self, once perceived, becomes the soul?”
Source: On Poetry and Craft: Selected Prose
“The self says, I am; The heart says, I am less; The spirit says, you are Nothing.”
Source: The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke
“Time marks us while we are marking time.”
Source: Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke, 1943-63
“What is madness but nobility of soul at odds with circumstance?”
Source: The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke
Source: Selected poems
“Being, not doing, is my first joy.”
Source: The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke
Source: The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke
Source: On Poetry and Craft: Selected Prose
“Any fool can take a bad line out of a poem; it takes a real pro to throw out a good line.”
Source: Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke, 1943-63
“The damage of teaching: the constant contact with the undeveloped.”
“Teach as an old fishing guide takes out a beginner.”
Source: On Poetry and Craft: Selected Prose